When I was a boy in the 1950s, two narratives gave meaning to what I was experiencing. One featured Santa and presents under a decorated tree, and the other was about an event in Bethlehem, which was about a birth in a barn.
The first narrative framed Christmas as a sentimental prosperity festival. My mom and dad and I would go to the Christmas Eve service at First Lutheran Church, which was very romantic — Silent Night sung while we held candles, the altar flanked by dozens of poinsettias, all three choirs singing glorious music.
Then we’d come home and open our presents. Somehow Santa always knew what I wanted. The next day we’d go to Red and Helen Allen’s house for a turkey dinner. My dad always got a big box of Russell Stover’s chocolates where he worked which we sampled.
Life was predictable, happy and safe. No one that I knew got a divorce, and the Packers always had winning seasons.
The second narrative was about a young woman who got pregnant before she was married, had to give birth in a stable, and she and her young family had to flee to Egypt as refugees to escape the ruler’s slaughter of innocent babies.
For some reason, that story didn’t bother me. Life was good where I was living it, and the emphasis in church was on the angels singing to the shepherds and three magi bringing gifts to the newborn child.
Both narratives seemed to put into words my experience and give meaning to it.
One of the songs we heard on WOMT radio had the lyrics, “You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing let’s be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly.”
“Amen,” we said, “this describes how we feel.”
Then I grew up, got married and went through a divorce at the age of 40. Suddenly hearing the sentimental prosperity narrative became extremely painful because it reminded me of how much I had lost. My two kids and I bravely tried to fake it, but the presents under the tree couldn’t override the fact that one chair at the dinner table was empty.
I had been a pastor for eight years by then and that night the story of a young woman giving birth away from home before she was married made the sermon I gave meaningful, to myself if no one else, in a profound way for the first time in my life.
It became my story. In the story, recorded in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, God did not swoop down to Earth and bring peace even though the angels sang a hymn with those lyrics.
Instead of coming as a conquering super-hero, God came as a vulnerable baby to vulnerable parents. Instead of making Israel great again, the message the narrative gives is that the greatest power in the universe knows what I feel like and is walking along with me through the darkest valley.
In the political campaign just finished, we heard candidates promising to use political power to make our circumstances better. Some said they would make America like it used to be when I was a boy.
Now as an educated adult who listens to the news every night and has gone through two divorces and many other losses, those promises ring hollow, and sentimental feelings are hard to come by, no matter how much turkey and pumpkin pie I eat and glasses of Bailey’s I drink.
The older I get, the more the second narrative resonates.
There’s a story about a man who asked his rabbi, “Why does the prophet tell us that God puts his words ‘on’ our hearts instead of ‘in’ our hearts?”
“That’s because,” the rabbi replied, “when your heart breaks, the words will fall in.”
The truth is that I never really heard the second Christmas story until I went through a divorce.
These days, most of my emotional wounds have healed; I’m happily married; my two adult children are doing pretty well; I’ve acquired the spiritual resources to weather the recent political storms; my expectations of heaven coming to Earth this side of death have been significantly lowered; and the young woman who got pregnant before getting married means a lot more to me than Santa does.
If you still feel like rockin’ around the Christmas tree, good for you. With my walker, I might even join you, but in my ripe old age, the story about a man who lives at the North Pole just makes me shiver.
And the narrative about the baby in the manger rings truer than ever.
Tom Holmes writes a regular column for the Forest Park Review, a Growing Community Media publication.
